Theory to Practice: Teaching Critical Thinking

I I always give my disclaimer I uh I'm a professor of media arts uh here at the University which is in the department of art however uh my PhD is in curriculum and instruction my master's degree is in instructional technology and my undergraduate degree is in secondary English so I have a lot of background in in education and today going to be a personal Day I don't like to get personal a lot with my classes but this is going to be something different because critical thinking is such an intimate way of teaching we have to

be able to become very close to our students so I'm going to start with a bunch of stories because we have to start from high school you ready I had a wonderful upbringing the reason why is because I Came from a family of readers during my high school career I would go in and every summer was my best time because I was able to pick certain kinds of books one summer I remember picking Shakespeare had a wonderful time reading all of of the comedies and tragedies and worked my way through some of the histories okay

and I even remember my senior year trying to find out what philosopher I wanted to take with me to My undergraduate education so I picked Herman Hessa because the Beatles were popular in my era Eastern thought was popular so Eastern philosophy was something of Interest continuing the story and there's a purpose behind all this my junior year was special unlike today when people have a junior year abroad they simply go off and take some classes in my day you had To apply to the university and be accepted just the same way you had you are

accepted to the University of South Carolina I applied to the University of London and was happily accept it on going there remember I studied Shakespeare remember my background I am an English teacher I love Shakespeare I go into a Shakespeare class my professor is there and he says for the first Session I want you to be able to take the first scene of McBeth The Witch's scene and I want want you to give me a cold reading fine we all gave him a cold reading I also had some background in theater at the time after

that we go in another class I want you to take the same scene and I want you to give me a refined presentation that was part of our homework we gave a refined Presentation we go into another class he says now I want you to take the same scene and I want you to give me variations upon the scene if you know Shakespeare you know that it is done now with great variation so we give him gave him a terrible variation but it was discussed and analyzed at the end of the session I go up

to my professor and I say Sir with all due Respect you know I'm the only American here I said in the United States if I were studying Shakespeare having a class of Shakespeare as I move into my third week I probably would have read three plays and analyze them and discuss them and he looked at me and he said and that is the difference Mr Hand clock between the United States and Great Britain in America you study quantity in England we study quality put me in my place right okay and he was right that was

the British British education I was there to read English not just to take courses and study I was there to read and that's what I did now as a result of that let's take a look at high schools and that's why I started by telling you my high school story Okay what is the highest program for international student assessment they call it Pisa now this is an international evaluation of different kinds of academic programs across the world which one which country do you think is rated the highest for reading math and science come on guys

where I'm Singapore Singapore Singapore Math interesting any other Guesses China they're all together in the same area right and what we know is Oriental education is dedication right what else Eng England ah because we read in England good Germany ah because they're very precise and everything has to be highly organized you ready for the answer Finland Finland Why if we take the look a look at the characteristics of Finnish education what we find you remember a guy George Bush right No Child Left Behind where did he get it from the fins come out and say

we have a whatever it takes attitude in other words if I have a student no matter what it takes to get him reading at that level I'm going to do it they have a graduation rate of 93% United States 75.5% a lot better than us isn't it they even start school later than we do they start at seven years of age that's when they have to go to school by the way you don't have to take any nights because notes because if you notice the sheet I gave you all of the information that I'm giving

you here is on that sheet I'd rather have your attention than have you writing now one of the interesting Things about Finland is more than 50% of the country is immigrants my wife is an a ESL teacher English is a second language she just retired and they have to deal with problems in language in culture and yet they have a 93% graduation rate okay 30% of the students at some point need to have some kind of special help that's why it's that whatever it takes attitude they have small schools all the teachers know All the

students they have no man here I love this they have no mandated or St uh standardized tests except for their High School graduation exam why waste your time teaching when you can waste your when you can spend your concentrate on learning that is Finland and what they do is here's the most important thing in every single class what they do is they engage the Students in critical thinking why is critical thinking so important this is not an easy session that you're going through because I have to talk a lot this is more like a a

PowerPoint chalk talk because I have to get across certain information and then we can talk okay come on okay if you look at critical thinking as a definition it's a process that explores rational and interpretive reflection to derve a Potential solution to a topic or issue that has no clearly defined solution it's not like hardcore science or math where you have a single answer you have to be able to look at things from a variety of perspectives okay so as a result of that those of you who are here take a moment take one of

the sheets that are here that's the second sheet on here and I just want you to take not long very quickly try and just do the first one Identify a minimum of three topics or issues that you teach in your classes have no singular clearly defined answer or solution for you guys it should be easy so they're from sociology where you from that was fast right like your whole program see why I told you this would be a good session for you Guys how are we doing everyone there close enough can I go on okay

let's take a look at some samples that I want to use in here because what I want to do is I want to try and cross the curricula at the University so if you look at some of the samples that I've picked on I have one from business and journalism students will create a national marketing PR strategy to for the use of solar powered Heat pumps in the United States note I do not say they're going to analyze them or they're going to study them they're going to create them that's the difference so so we're

going to look at that we're going to look at students designing an experiment to measure the properties of five different Plastic Products in chemistry or engineering they will Design they will experiment they will look for New Uses Students will produce a photograph by the way where am I I'm in media arts right so you're going to put up with me one of mine students will produce a photograph using at least four to eight photograph production rules but what I decided to do because I know I always get people in Sciences we're going to look at

a scientific way to create a picture uh students will write an 8 to 10 page paper right I'm an English teacher an 8 to 10 page paper comparing 12 performed variations of the witch's introduction which is what I had to do ultimately when I read English at the University of London so we'll look at how you do that and then the students will produce a brief of a current issue in the US Senate you notice everything it's we're not talking about studying anything we're talking about creating things we're talking about doing things okay and that's

what is so important and That's what saxs tells us is so important and one of the reasons why we're looking at these is because of Bloom's taxonomy the sax review that we had was based upon Bloom's taxonomy not just Bloom's taxonomy but Bloom's new taxonomy which actually one of our professors here at the University of South Carolina chaired um so what we do is there are two ways of looking at this this is what they traditionally show people they show Them the process dimensions and Bloom would say what you do the first thing you do

and and look about this as a psychological way of how we learn the first thing you do is you learn something you remember it then after you do that you understand it because you make sense of it from that you apply it in some way then you analyze it take it apart deconstruct it then you evaluate your deconstruction and then you create something new that's What Bloom would say if you look at the behavioral evidence of that the behaviors that an individual has to go through in order to remember something you memorize it in many

instances after you memorize it when when you understand what does it mean to understand something that's a stupid term not very precise is it what you do is you you comprehend it how do you measure Comprehension when you apply something what you do is you give it a procedural application when you analyze something you begin to critically analyze and that's what we're starting to talk about today from there you go and evaluate which means that you synthesize you bring it back together again and when you create something you create or solve original problems now if

we look at our first example with the with uh the sample Instructional exercises for critical analysis what we find is that the students will create a national marketing strategy to use for the use of solar powered heat pumps in the United States what you do is you involve your students in creating various strategies IES according to Target Market Market demographics everybody comes in as a team they all figure out where they can how it would work and it works very different in South Carolina I'm from New York City it's very different from here than it

is from where I'm from my wife's from Ohio it's very different than over there I'm from the city okay so totally different Market uh you will they produce Financial operations lists and then from that they begin to prioritize the list and they begin to work as a team what they do is this they analyze and synthesize this is something called Accordion learning ready what does it mean to analyze watch my hands I deconstruct the information the ACC cardion goes out more and more air goes in more and more information goes into it right then what

I do after my students begin to rip it apart and have all these elements I force them to push it back together again and to take the most Salient bits of information and I want you to repeat back to me what it is that you're trying to say how are you Going to sell this heat pump in South Carolina got it it's deconstruct construct deconstruct construct analyze synthesize analyze synthesize we could say uh deductive logic inductive logic deductive logic induct whatever discipline you want to go it all works the same way let's take a look

at another learning theory that's why I said this will get a little tough okay instead of Bloom's Theory there was a guy Robert G Robert uh wonderful Professor very smart man from the University of Florida and uh he came up and wrote numerous books and is very well known for this Theory called uh G's hierarchy of learning the one thing about this though is I find it very good for those people who are in The Sciences and math this is better because watch what he says what you want to do is you want to do

knowledge recognition generation assoc You make associations multiple discri discriminations Concepts principle learning and solving problems here's an example let's the reason why I said it's good for science right what you find if you take the periodic table of elements what's the first thing you have your students do they learn the elements names numbers they learn what are in those little tiny boxes and they begin to memorize it don't they after that They have to be able to make associations and what they do is they put them into families metals non-metals right so they associate them

into a larger concept or beginning to move into a larger idea from there they begin to multiply discriminate within the families themselves you have noble gases you have halogens in the non-metal family you can do that with every single family correct See how we're beginning to now make associations to do the deconstruct deconstruction from here we begin to organize them into different kinds of Concepts and as we put together our Concepts then we begin to create different kinds of compound elements and from that we can use the elements for assorted purposes very simple example two

parts hydrogen one part oxygen what do you Get water right water and we can drink it and we can save the world and Save Our Lives what do you get with one part hydrogen one part oxygen peroxide huh peroxide hen hydrogen peroxide no yeah one one part hydrogen one part oxygen hydroxide yeah or commonly called heavy water what is heavy water used for nuclear Reactors kind of interesting isn't it so what you can do if you go through the learning process here you can see how you can either save the world or destroy it you

know going with this particular example if we now take the two of them together this is this is a very difficult uh slide to put up to understand and I realize that but I want to do this I have to do it this way because I have to make you understand how it's working the only Differences that exist between G's hierarchy of learning and Bloom's taxonomy is that bloom now is emphasizing evaluation an an analysis and evaluation where G is not g is talking about multiple discrimination and Association at the lower levels of learning Dan

actually has us go through more steps but I think what's most important if we look here concept and Understanding are the same thing memorization and knowledge recognition generation use of terminology all the same thing very similar Concepts and understanding are very similar when you put the the the traditional the traditional way of defining how to do something a procedure is that you put together multiple Concepts in a formula to create an action Okay so what we find is that we begin to go up we have multiple Discrimination and Association concept learning principle learning which we

just talked about then we begin to apply it in procedures and this is the area of critical learning from here on and it's that it's that synthesis and it's that criticism that constantly has to occur the accordion right the accordion going out and going in going out and going in and going out and going in take a look at the picture on the Wall you like it can anybody tell me what it is a building a building sailb it looks like what sailboat in the middle a sailboat there's a sailboat in the middle anything else

a hotel a hotel bang Bingo yes yes I have a little insomnia and uh sometimes I get up at night and I'll read during part of the night just to put myself back to sleep or when I'm somewhere else outside of Town EG Atlanta Georgia I go for walks so I went for a walk one night and I went to the Hilton the grand Hilton what you're seeing it's not a sale it's a bar so I went to a bar I think I had half a beer because I sat there and I was just looking

around and I saw that picture it looks nothing like that there absolutely nothing like that but I could see the picture in my in my head I tell my students you have To learn to study with your mind's eye not your real eyes your mind's eyes my eyes see things that aren't that most people don't see the question is how do you construct it right let's pull out the accordion what you do is the first thing you do is you pull out a tripod because you have to use slow shutter speeds because this if I

handheld the shot it would be all vibrating right second thing I need to be able to use short focal distances to Increase foreground object size we know that when we use like more wide angle lenses we can increase the objects within the foreground which is why why that sale looks so big it's nothing more than something above the bar if you look at small aperatures we know in physics that little tiny holes when you put them in cameras rather than big fat holes will give you greater areas in depth of field so our students have

to learn that This is all physics I'm giving you now right you go and you tilt the angle up what happens when you tilt up a camera the image it expands right it expands I know I knew it was going to expand but somehow I have to make it look like that I have to squish it together how do I squish it together so what I do is I get an ultra wide angle lens which has these humongous curves on them almost like a fisheye so I was able to take all of the Element those

are floors that's like 35 floors in the grand Hilton in that shot and that's how I began to put them together the point of focus I know and I we all know who when we study the physics of visual Imaging we know that there's an area 1/3 in front and 2/3 behind that is in Focus so that meant I couldn't focus on this thing as much as I wanted to I couldn't because all that area in the front all that great focus in the front would go to waste I focus Behind it but it fell

into to the area of focus so you don't have to always focus on something to get it in there in your shot the contrast and the color are increased for cognitive retention it I it took me an hour to take this thing the reason why it took me so long is because first that sail was red that and it was ugly and then it was yellow and it was uglier and then it got green and it it looked not nice and then it turned Blue and I said oh blue is the way right the higher

contrast we know from from perception psychology increase in contrast increases cognitive retention so that was simply done and then the iso reciprocity matches color ship so that's something where I increase the sensitivity of my film chips and it was all this is a Digi shot so all the film chips I had to make them more sensitive I increased the Sensitivity of them hence increasing the contrast between them and that's how I got the shot you got the idea you see how I pulled out that accordion I tell my students let's take a look at this

as an example all right you got the idea go home and apply some of the concepts when you come back with your next shot I want you to tell me how many of these Concepts you applied it's you only takes 2 years or More years to create an artist a reasonable artist okay in this area so let's take a look at critical thinking now for critical writing activities hi I'm Graham Glenn assistant provos and executive director for teaching learning plus technology at Stonybrook University and this is Innovations and [Music] education [Music] in our show we

feature faculty and staff using Innovative approaches to teaching and applications of educational technology that have had a positive effect on student learning in our show today I'm joined by Charles Hadad an associate professor in the school of Journalism we will be discussing how writing can be used to promote critical thinking Charles welcome to the show thank you very much pleasure to be here Can you tell us a little bit about what you teach and the venue in which you teach it yes I am a writing professor in the journalism School the new journalism school I

teach both ends of the spectrum the beginners who are just entering our school I'm kind of one of The Gatekeepers and I teach the seniors that are working on major pieces of writing how to write magazine writing so I have the two ends of the spectrum okay and what size classes are they gener my Classes are no bigger than 18 students okay I teach in a workshop setting and I use the Socratic method I try to push as much work as I can onto the students make them do all the hard work okay so we've

mentioned critical thinking can you define what you think the score score core skills of critical thinking are yeah it's a good question um first of all it's the ability to think well think independently the ability to sift through Material and Marshal evidence to make a argument or a case for something the ability to sort of work material to come up with a new understanding what I would say the sort of the the uh the gold standard is to do something I call commit quiet Mischief that is push the envelope of understanding with the knowledge you

have acquired okay and do you think that we can teach iCal thinking I mean is that a trait that may already be inherent in a student and That you can just maybe refine a little bit or can you truly change that's a great question because that's one of the big debates in Academia can you teach critical thinking my personal experience is that you can that um when students are given the skills and practice those skills they develop the what I would call an attitude and a habit of critical thinking that is they learn to be

skeptical they don't accept things at face value They go and verify and find out for themselves and then ask themselves now what can I do with this information what some what's something new a lot of it is an attitude a lot of it is opening their eyes to a way of seeing the world that I can I can do this okay and why do you think writing is a particularly good way to teach those skills because writing is thinking in its purest form so if your writing is modeled mhm then your thinking is Modeled okay

and so so how do you guide them through that process of improving their writing and improving their critical thinking skills at the same time to me it's really all about thinking it sort of when I see their writing and if their writing is clear and compelling that tells me when they've grasped the material mhm and they are using their minds effectively to work through it so we use a series of exercises in ever escalating series of Challenges that force them that put them in a position that they have to use their mind and has to

think things through and are those a series of what you would call critically more difficult thinking exercises yes yes it's a series of assignments they we you know in my beginning class we start very B basically the beauty of a there's many people don't realize this but there even in the simplest news story about a fire MH that the intellectual rigor involved In making that series of fls clear to understand the natural flow of that order of those facts in a way that a stranger can comprehend what happened is a is very intellectually rigorous and

so for me journalism is just a platform through which to teach critical thinking which to me is one of the key skills that anybody should acquire in coming to University no matter what your discipline so would you say critical Thinking is synonymous with teaching people how to question well yes that's that the fun that is one of the fundamental skills and that's something that we push very hard in the journalism school is how I call it the craft of questioning there it is a craft and at its highest form is an art form and you

to question well you must be a critical thinker you must have the skills of critical thinker okay so let's say you have a freshman student who is not very Good at this process which would describe about as we all know his professors about 95% of them okay so you you encounter a piece of unclear muddy conceptually confusing writing how do you lead them through this process well it starts with the whole tenor of the class I want my classes to have a sense of danger the students the moment they walk in that they know they

got to be on their game mhm so that they're alert They're paying attention so they know when they come into my class they will be called on that there's a very good chance not only by me but by their peers so in our classes we take their work and we put it up put it up for everybody to see with your name on it right because what counts I've learned is not what I think but what their peers think so when they it it they developed their own standard of Excellence so there's no way I

want to my piece of Work in front of my peers where they can obviously see this is sloppy I didn't do the work I haven't thought it through so this is where pushing the work back onto the students come in I put their work up and through a series of guided questions make them critiquing guided questions each time say that again is it the same set of guided questions depends on the situation the same I'm going for the same principles okay but every situation Can be different so that teach skepticism not to accept things that

face value even if it is accepted conventional wisdom to teach them to question and verify if that's the universal goal the question I ask may be different each time to get them to have that Epiphany so I use their work as sort of the the foil if you will to teach this lesson so I'm trying to move them to the place where they start to ask the questions Themselves that they've developed their own critical ear yeah and it takes at least you know to even get on the right path of semester it this is difficult

ult stuff here's the thing most young people love a challenge they first they may complain they may whine but at heart they cannot resis a great challenge put in the right way and they almost cannot resist reaching for that bar got the Idea pretty good for writing isn't it okay keeping things in writing makes them clarify those ideas and that's the whole idea whoops okay okay all right so what's happening in critical writing what he's essentially saying is getting them getting he uses the Socratic method so everybody has to be defending themselves there's a lot

of questioning there's a lot of answering there's a lot of Defense as a result they're going through conceptual they have to give conceptual answers to the the questions they don't just give statements of of of the information they have to be able to compare and contrast a lot of the optional answers a lot of the critical thinking they have to be able to criticize everyone's answers that's why he's saying he teaches them to become skeptical and then as a result there's summarizing all of the potential answers That they can do for their own papers and

what they're doing is they're get creating a final reflection on their own criticism okay now if we begin to look at reading let's get away from writing let's get into reading and if we take a look let's get back to my my friends in London and the problem that we were faced and uh looking at a having to create an 8 to 10 P page paper comparing 12 performed Variations of the witch's introduction by the way uh anybody know Roman palansky you do okay do you know that Roman palansky went back and did a version

of MC Beth did you know anyone know that he selected a new director a firsttime director to do just the witches scenes surprise surprise blew me away because it happened after I went through this Whole experience you know who we picked a man by the name of Hugh Hefner and the witches scenes look like they came right out of little Annie Fanny not that I don't read Playboy but some of the things that are there it it it had that kind of same kind of cartoonish experience to it and I looked at that and I

said God my professor was right okay so as a result of this what You do is you develop conceptual answers again to the various kinds of questions that are being posed you look at conceptual answers inside of your classroom exercises so you create exercises for the students to get them to look at things in a in a higher level of thinking you get them to compare and contrast them through debate then you outline flowchart or concept map development of Concepts okay concept map is interest It's an interesting concept I flowchart uh I'm an instructional designer

by trade by profession so I'm used to flow charting and and breaking down all the yes and no answers and getting them into uh into uh different ways of of of uh uh getting uh different ways of of trying to be able to do certain procedures but but here what they're saying is that concept mapping is just putting things in an array of spots and Just drawing lines between them and drawing correlations and the concept is to constantly do the accordion concept analyze synthesize analyze synthesize analyze synthesize keep going back and forth and then do

a self critique in some kind of a final paper see how they raise up and up the whole time let's take a look at another way of doing activities there's there are ways Of studying critical writing there are ways of studying critical reading now let's get into having students in your class all working together and we'll do these called think share pair activities and there's a whole array of them think share pair simply means that when you're teaching one of your classes you break your students up into to groups of two go to the person

next to you and and and try and solve a problem okay and uh that's think share Pair and uh you you can start out by working with your groups and coming to class consensus having everyone in your class come to some kind of consensus then you break them up into Pairs and as you have you you say take two people together and solve this problem then what you do after that is you say all right the other pair who were next to you evaluate what the other person has done and vice versa so what you're

doing is You're increasing the debate as you look at Taps which is called talking aloud paired problem solving and that's the one of the secrets of think share pair if I tell you to solve a problem one person is the recorder and one person is the problem solver the problem solver says look this is how you do it if we're going to be selling heat pumps here in America and we got to do it in South Carolina this is what you do Bam Bam Bam Bam and he starts saying you know going and this is

why you're doing it and then the other person keep saying why justify that and then as a result of that you you begin to uh make your ideas more concrete among the students from there they begin assessing words through uh checkmates okay and these are people who check on you who are other other pair people and then there's another way of doing something called 10 plus two process which uh people who have come to Sessions like this not Tas but General faculty that come to sessions probably have not had a chance to to see much

about this but 102 is where you lecture for 10 minutes and you give them a a problem that they have 2 minutes to solve lecture 2 minutes to solve a problem lecture 10 minutes 2 minutes to solve a and you you can do that for an entire period to begin to get your students to understand certain things so if you're taing in languages for Instance you you you can take grammar uh you can you can break it up into vocabulary and 10 minutes two two minutes 10 minutes 2 minutes okay and then lastly case study

and many research problem activities we have a lot of people in in uh areas of of of Public Health Science services and policy management um uh we get a lot of people in in retailing that that do a lot of this where uh they take a look at uh uh get The students to analyze bullet cases give them a case for a company and and get them to break it up into individual elements that they have to be able to study how do you create a brief for instance there were different ele there were specific

elements in a brief begin to write them down make a whole list of them from that take the take some presented cases and uh fixing presented cases look at multiple choice begin to see how they're being used in Different kinds of cases from that develop original many case elements so you may find variations upon the elements that are being studied in the course and say yeah but in today's world this is what's happening we're not doing this 50 years ago so you advance the knowledge help the students do that and as a result you formally

formulate new Mini cases as a result of that and then you begin to Defend them okay now as a result of that what's the whole bottom line of this session this long session right you have to be able to try and figure out what you're supposed to do with those students you have to make critical thinkers and these are people who can distinguish between fact and opinion they can base judgments upon different kinds of evidence that's being Given to them they can see a whole bunch of multiple options and debate those options to say which

one should we pick today or which is going to be which do you think is better they can see multitudes of perspectives to create those options because I see the world differently than you uh learn they one of the big things is they learn to accordion they analyze synthesize analyze synthesize deconstruct construct deconstruct Construct right um uh in you go deductive logic inductive logic deductive logic inductive logic and they begin to relate hypotheses and conclusions uh in harmony with one another and they can apply validation and reliability to the principles that that you are teaching

them to do and come to some kind of professional conclusion okay boy that was long huh how'd I do you got the idea yes okay As a result what I'd like you to do is now go to the second page second part of the sheet that I asked you to work on where you put those questions and try and put down some answers for for for for for for Okay how we doing I'm I'm tired of talking it's your turn who wants to share some of the things they teach in their classes and different ways

because it's your idea it's your job now to help somebody next to you or somebody else across the room to get another different idea I don't have all the answers okay you have them yes and let's when we start let's go with first name and department and course that you're Teaching uh my name is Jeremy I'm in the Music School of Music and I'm teaching $100 Bas production mus history one of the biggest things we discuss is comparison of historically for performances versus Modern Performance and um it's kind of a tricky area you have documents

to try to present how performance be done so to make students compare and contrast those things and um the potential instruction methods you know these things that I've Kind of used but haven't really thought about it this clearly to look at the um the parent share have students get together and discuss why they felt the Modern Performance was better or worse than the historically performance and vice versa have them compare opinions contrast opinions and share with each other um just because you know there's no right answer that can can I give a just an idea

just to to bounce off uh there's there's a Theory called concept attainment it's a rather old Theory but I love it what it teaches and it sounds like it might work for you concept attainment states that when you're working with a group of Learners what you do is you can't give them all the right answers so what you do because they're hard to Define so what you do is you say hey guys here's a wrong answer now here's a right answer now you give me your ideas here's A they'll say here's here's an answer you

say well that's moving close let's see if we can improve it so what you do is what you do is you contrast you do appropriate inappropriate and what you do is you begin to bring it closer and closer until they can finally have a greater understanding of it you like that okay good okay yeah Department and teaching so something you deal with this sets of numbers you deal with this in every math class and the question comes up what is a set and then you define it to be collection of elements you say what is

an element things that are attained in so we have a circular def like one definition applies the other so how do you come up with a non circular Definition the question is that possible but how do you get someone so I was thinking a te we tear students up to see how to address this problem but there is no you don't know what I'm trying to say yes okay I yeah I love it what I love it okay so when you get when you get the students to be able to debate that and there's no

true answer to that do you find that that the debates come closer to it let's talk about I I always talk About something called truth and truthfulness truth is what we can accept as reality and Truth close to truth is possible truthfulness is a degree of truth it's almost like validity and reliability okay and uh do you get them do you find that when you when you work with them that way that they get closer and closer to uh look at it from higher theoretical perspectives 95% of the class Doesn't 5% you see it kind

of get they get stuck and they typically get to the point where they say you have set doesn't contain but neither do I I don't know okay other ideas I was just going to ask you a question so cuz I I'm math Coit right so I I'm trying to imagine myself in your class you're doing that to me okay and I would be very angry I think so so so my Question because because I I think I understand conceptually what you're trying to do right we we all want to get them to think but is

it fair to the students or do they I'm just ask that do they feel set up or frustrated when you're done cuz I would inhibit learning I think I mean I'm frustrated with the definition I think everyone is but something I mean if I you can give someone a set of numbers and they go I Know what this is I can Pi on it these things are El you feel comfortable using them but the actual definition behind it ising is ambiguous when I ask them this question was it to you know see if they come

up that answer just to why difficult so I wouldn't really TCH them yeah and and and so I guess that's kind of like my thing because I think that for me there are some things where in within our discipline they just have to say yeah that's you just have to Say this is it yeah right and so maybe there's some things that are just on that lower level Spectrum right just just know it believe it trust me that it is and there are other things maybe that we can engage in right okay um I would

like to expand on this and then tell you something that I think is important in education sure um this is first name Gibson and I'm in the uh educational studies um in the PHD program this is a type of a sotic Seminar and we when I taught middle school that's what we did because we wanted children in the early ages to start learning how to think that way so we would put them in groups and we' put maybe a Eminem or something on there and you had to eat you had a chance to eat all

three but you had to eat them because everyone had to speak because they won't speak and we had to train them to do this but it was good exercise for them because it had them to think About questions that are really there are no answer it's just coming up with a compromise of what you think it is and it helped them to critically think or use those skills of how to think and go beyond the knowledge or the comprehension or even analyzing you really are going out there and trying to decide so I really like

that and it took a while it took several years starting sixth grade seventh grade we a group of teachers vertically Tau and we said okay This is the way we're going to do it I do it by the time they rais grade you didn't even have to tell them they were wanting to do this they were excited about and so this was a good thing but talking about do do I have a yes please do I uh have this thing about a and you probably heard a field dependent and field inde have I know it's

been researched in the way of teachers and it was not enough evidence to prove this but I have a Different way of thinking about this because I think people do think that way and I think about and what that is that either you think in parts or you think in relationships and there are people that think in relationships which in uh when you compared this in testing they do a lot better because they're able to think through something and analyze and see the pieces where people think in Parts they don't generalize the information well I'm

one of those that Thinks in parts I'll be honest with you I'm polarized so knowing this about myself and if I can tell my teachers my children about this in the education field look at yourself decide who you are because this is what we have to do is decide because we don't want to be on a Continuum on either side would be better if you could see that okay I think in Parts this person thinks in relationships what can we do to move ourselves more to the middle and talk About it that way because if

you know this then okay I'm thinking in details I need to move this way but it's okay to be in details and it's okay to be in relationship but swinging back and forth and pulling it both together to get this critical thinking idea so I think that is an important concept and but to know your students you stud to students know themselves and you know yourself on the way you can yes yes what do you think that that's great for and for those of You who who might not be familiar you may be familiar this

is field dependent independent the second way of looking at this theory is called Locust of control Locus yes yes that's a second way of looking at it so it depending upon the discipline from which you come and you come more from from the field dependent independent perspective of it uh and and yeah the idea is to to get people together to to start to look at problems as a matter of fact uh if you if it I I Have a second session here that is it's it's called creativity it's called teaching creative thinking uh and

and as a matter of fact if if I can do this for a moment I I teach a course um in in creative thinking but uh G would say uh he would he stops it and he says that the highest level of learning is problem solving which is let's get to your field dependent independent that is looking at the relationships and the and the knowledge but what we find is that There's actually a Higher Learning it's called problem finding Einstein came out and said science is nothing more than the solving of problems of mathematical problems

he said the real problem in science is not in solving the problems but in trying to find the problems that need to be solved how to get your brain to go farther Beyond and I teach this as a matter of Fact if anybody wants to take my course in creative thinking uh come at the end of the semester uh at the end of the period and I'll I teach it next semester what I know exactly what creativity is only for myself I can't give it to you everybody has to search for what creativity is for

themselves and this course is a big exploration and my second session that I I I I teach in the creativity side um how to teach creative thinking deals With just that so if anyone is interested see me after class it only meets once a week it's fun class uh and hopefully you learn a lot but uh this is okay other other people yes um so I'm teaching a course in in world literature and I'm using a lot of these these methods to try to get them to debate and critique and I don't know they seem

to be afraid of critiquing each other and no matter if I put them in groups no matter if I put an example Up and they will the class is just they like I say okay so is this a good answer what's wrong with this answer are there any problems what do we think and well why well and there's just no so I'm having a lot of trouble getting them to getting them motivated to pick things apart I think they can I just can't get them to do it okay I have an idea on how to

do it but I'd rather have somebody else talk well The idea my head is is uh that guy head's idea maybe you correct one just red ink all over it put it up on the wall and um I've heard I don't know do that for all of them that motivation of playing on their ego that seems to work for GU from ston book yes yes and uh I don't know if you can get away with that is that a purple violation I mean I just mean in terms of I'm not even talking about them writing

essays and us we're just talking about You know things like well why are we reading this work is it important is it not important and with that they won't okay I have something to say about that but I'd rather have somebody else talk and then I'll go okay um you do something it sound more like each other do something like do anmly so like they yes I'm so happy I asked you to [Laughter] talk keep going exchange Pap or you do It like you could give them a you know give example and have them you

know put something in the box and you randomly talk about you don't even know who you're read but then they can talk about what each other said or whatever just keep they don't feel like yeah could I give a little idea B ex you were spot on okay one thing you can do and and I do have another session that teaches this By the way for TAS it's in my ta sections uh I have one where I teach you how to create a rubric and one of the things about a rubric is that you dedicate

to print what is important in an analysis and at what level you will deem that to be an a a b a c and a D or an f and the the the rubrics are a lot easier to produce than you think and uh when I first started I'm I I take you to a site where you get free rubric design and they do things like how to how to analyze a paper and then it talks about analysis Clarity of information um use of resources and it just it gives you examples and when I first

started using this rubric system it's called Ruby star.com rubby star.org it's uh www. Ruby star. for the number four teachers.org and if you go to there you Can start you can open up your own your own uh name and you can you you you can go into create rub bricks and they'll give you samples and it is very intuitive it's very easy to use uh so that's that's a way that you can make things more concrete for your students because this is tough like he said this is tough stuff to teach and there are lots

of different answers but a rubric is a nice way to make them more concrete who Else okay okay I'm teaching a loss prevention class for retailers I'm Karen in the retailing department and I'm teaching a new class um loss prevention for retailers and um I'm going to incorporate critical writing skills by having students um evaluate the current practices of a local retailer and then um think through the problems that exist and the problems that um happen to all Retailers and then specifically to that particular retailer and to recommend best practices based on what they've learned

in class good comments maybe not the best who no who how who's going to Define best practices um the student I was hoping somebody would say that question okay um the students will Define um the best practices based on what they have Learned read discussed what have you applied to you know okay that that's a great idea because there's another theory in education that says if you want to be able to get the student to to learn to teach to think critically instead of making the student the student make the student the teacher you make

the student no you don't you do it this way right yeah this is how I do No I do it this way and then what happens is you begin to get them engaging at a higher level because you have given them the power yeah one other point add to that and I my what I taught was math so I getting him that idea get a teacher I would say okay how did you do it because there's more more than one way to do it and I would always want them to realize there's more ways to

get the answer so I would say okay if you're the teacher how Would you teach this or and then okay do you have another way and I'd have all of that I said okay let's make division so you can all see that we all have the same value at the end but we all have different ways of of of of showing the way we see it in our heads and so that they could teach it that way so I to good other comments sure I'll go ahead go for it um there 10 minute uh lecture

two minute problem Solving I think yes but again um like his example of uh posting of the thing on the wall um oh what class are you teaching by the way I'm teaching my name is David Han I'm teaching Spanish 121 and U one of the ways to get uh students to to grasp Concepts is um to talk about another discipline um in other words you Know not just focusing on grammar and and vocab in Spanish but talking about something like uh a controversial topic maybe in Latin America you know or or math but anyhow

I was thinking at the end of the semester when supposedly they've got some some skills behind them they could write a 250w essay of uh defending their stance on a topic um that involves us and Latin America like amnesty or legalization of drugs and um that way you know there's no right Answer um it would uh encourage them to defend their like I said their their stance um and at the same time they got to use the grammar and vocab that they've been exposed to um and I guess the method that that would apply would

be the L talking about posting on the wall good idea I've been in some classes where the teacher has picked a particularly good Essay and asked the student if she could post it anonymously on on the Blackboard as an example and then um sometimes we'll even go through it in class discussion later and so why is this a good essay what do this offer do well um so that might be inverting the process you're talking about but that might be sucessful to you I'm looking at my clock we have 60 seconds left to fill out

those evaluations they always want us to and Wait before you fill it out please please please the most important question on here is the last one the that's how you will help us to better serve you the last question and of course fill out everything else as well